


Punk's Febuwhump Challenge

by sheApunk89



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Hugs all around, Hurt/Comfort, Lol Probably Not, M/M, Protective brothers, Sorry Not Sorry, Whump, maybe I'll finish a challenge for once., tags to be added as we go, we hurt the ones we love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29134914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheApunk89/pseuds/sheApunk89
Summary: Hopefully hurt/comfort counts as whump...Will tag warnings in notes.1- Mind Control2- "I can't do this anymore."3- Imprisonment4 - buried alive(not literally. Like, emotionally? I guess?)
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & CT-7567 | Rex, CT-6116 | Kix & CT-7567 | Rex, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 57





	1. Mind Control (Rex & Kix)

**Author's Note:**

> Theme - Mind Control  
> Tags/Warnings: Post Teth, alcohol abuse and it's side effects

He sat alone in his bunkroom in the dark, his hand wrapped loosely around a bottle of something he didnt think had a name. Not officially anyway. The boys always came up with names for the osik they brewed in the bowels of the ship he pretended not to know about. Bantha Piss. Tube Juice. Jango Fettini. Kaminoan Hot Water. Armor Stripper.

Rex didn't particularly care about names. Just that it made his mind numb enough to black out.

Not quite the same as sleeping. But a damn sight easier than staring at the bulkhead all night trying to erase the feeling of claws inside his brain.

_"You will contact Skywalker now."_

His stomach rolled at the sound of her voice. It echoed in the room, in his brain, slid through his thoughts leaving a trail of ice and Rex with the enduring feeling of filth, no matter how long he stood under scalding showers in the fresher.

_"You will ask him to identify his location in this base."_

The sound of glass breaking made Rex blink. Light caught on a thousand diamonds at his feet and pain exploded in his palms when he shifted to get a closer look and fell to the floor.

_“Anakin, this is Captain Rex, what is your location?”_

Rex watched blood pool around his fingers. The pain was better than the drink at clearing her voice out of his head.

He would have to remember that.

* * *

Kix was still swearing at Jesse as he barreled down the corridor.

“He said he was fine! He was just going to work on some paperwork, Kix.” His riduur continued to insist running along beside him.

Kix ignored him, as he had the first three times Jesse said it, and shouted at a pair of troopers walking side by side ahead of them to clear out of the way.

At the Captain’s door they both skidded to a stop and Kix used his medical override to open the door without trying the chime.

The room was dark and reeked of blood and the particularly heinous breed of home brew the Cascade company liked to make.

He sent a withering glance to Jesse, who was staring wide eyed and pale at the sight of their captain, kneeling in a puddle of blood and sick beside the bunk.

“Does that look fine to you?” Kix snapped, not waiting for a response before going to his Captain. Unlike Rex, Kix was still wearing his armor, so when he knelt in the broken glass from what Kix assumed he'd been drinking from, it shifted harmlessly beneath his knee plate. With gentle, careful hands Kix pulled Rex up by the shoulders, doing his best not to disturb the glass embedded in the man’s skin. He was thankful when Jesse appeared beside him, silent and contrite, to help him move the Captain back up onto the bunk.

Rex said something that might have been intelligible if Kix were as drunk as he was. As it was the medic just shook his head.

“You know better, Captain.” He said, low, peering down at Rex’s shredded palms as best he could in the low light of the room. “Where’s Cody?” He looked up when Jesse raised the lights, nodding his thanks. Everyone knew troopers drank, often to excess. No one could blame them, there was a war on after all and clones were the ones on the front lines.

But most abided by the unwritten rule that no one was allowed to drink alone. Most tended to drink with their squads, some of the more solitary types, like Kix’s dear Captain, were “encouraged” (i.e.: expected and risked dismemberment by their medics if they didn’t) to find at least one vod they felt comfortable being vulnerable around if they were going to drink themselves stupid.

Cody was Rex’s.

“D’ty.” Rex managed. Kix sighed. Well that explained it. Suddenly Kix was glad he’d been the one to find the Rex and not the arguably overprotective Commander, he could only imagine what a tizzy that would have sent the the man into.

“C’mon, lets get you to the fresher. Jesse, help?”

Jesse nodded, coming to slide his hand under Rex’s thighs to do a seated carry to the attached fresher, when Rex began batting their hands away.

“C’n d’ it m’self.”

Kix rolled his eyes so hard his whole head went with it.

“Even if that were true, you so _wisely_ chose to get black out drunk in your blacks and there is shattered glass everywhere. I’m not about to risk more injuries to your feet when I’m already probably going to be wasting perfectly good stitches on your hands as it is.”

Rex appeared to acquiesce Kix’s argument and stopped struggling as the medic and Jesse carried him across the broken glass and into the fresher, setting him down. Kix yanked his hands over the sink and began rinsing the larger pieces of glass from the wounds.

A small noise from his Captain drew Kix’s eyes and his face softened.

“Jesse. Run to the medbay and grab my kit, will you?”

Jesse glanced at the Captain, just once, and then nodded, slipping silently from the room.

Kix pulled tweezers out of his belt and began carefully removing the tiny shards of glass from Rex’s palms.

He didn't speak as he worked, just steady and present the way he knew his Captain needed him to be and let them both believe Rex's tears were due to the injury and nothing more.


	2. "I can't do this anymore." (Rex)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theme: "I can't do this anymore."  
> Tags/Warnings: Post Victory and Death, Canon Major Character Death, Angst, Implied Self Harming Tendencies, Hurt no comfort

He knows better than this.

Knows it’s dangerous to be here. On this moon, deep in Empire space.

Everywhere he looks now he sees his own face looking out from empty eyes. Bodies wearing shiny, identical armor with vacant souls underneath.

(He found Cody once. His closest brother hadn’t known him, a stranger, unrecognizable but for his scar. He'd called Rex a traitor and tried to arrest him.

When he got back to the ship he had every intention of eating his blaster.

He still hasn’t quite forgiven Wolffe for coming back early and stopping him.)

Its Winter on this moon. Most of the buckets have been blown from their memorial stakes, Jesse's hasn’t though.

Rex sees his reflection in his brother's visor and thinks of how he would shout at him for risking his life to come here. Visiting the bodies of the dead isn’t the Vode's way.

But Rex just...he just can't _breathe_ anymore.

"Jesse."

He drops to his knees, presses a hand against the gash in the gap between his forearm plates, blaster burn from a recent run in with a bounty hunter. Pain rockets up his arm and he grits his teeth, tears prick his eyes. He doesn’t blink them back.

"Jesse." He says, the words scraping his throat raw. 

He misses hearing voices that aren't his own.

_Come back._

He tightens his grip on his arm and swallows a scream.

_I dont know how to be alone._

Theres shrapnel in the wound.

It hurts deep under his skin, blood seeps through his fingers and he takes a deep breath.

He can only breathe when it hurts.

"I'm sorry, Jess."

Sorry Jesse is dead. Sorry he couldn’t save him.

Sorry he can't take his place.

“I’m sorry, Jesse. I just..." He sighs, shuddery and shaky and stares up at the night sky sprawling overhead. “I just can’t do this anymore.”


	3. imprisonment (Cody & Rex)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3 - imprisonment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand I'm already a day behind. 
> 
> Prompt: Imprisonment (Cody & Rex)  
> Tags/Warnings: Medical BS, Protective Brothers

Alarms blared and the Tank Room of the Negotiator's medbay was chaotic tangle of running and shouting and swearing.

"100 CCs of oxygenated Bacta!"

"I need a replacement O2 valve right here right now!"

"Did someone call the Commander?"

"He's on his way, sir!"

"Lieutenant if we can't get him calm he's going to go into cardiac arrest!"

"I know I know. _Where_ is the Commander?"

"I'm here!" Cody barreled through the doors, still dirty from the mission and Kenobi hot on his heels.

He slammed to a stop in front of the first bacta tank, the current hub of activity.

Rex thrashed inside, wires and tubes tangled around his limbs, dislodging them and sloshing bacta out onto the deck-plating.

"Scratch?" Cody shouted over the noise. In response the CMO on board walked over, dragging the Commander to one side, out of the way. Cody listened with half an ear as Scratch explained the various and sundry injuries Rex had accumulated during his brief (not brief enough, not by a long shot) stay with his Separatist host.

"...but we were able to stop the bleeding. There's also three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, broken wrist..."

In the center of the room Kenobi had approached Rex's tank and placed a hand on the glass. Eventually, some of Rex's thrashing slowed.

"...not to mention a ruptured spleen, bruised kidney, and his lungs were half filled with fluid before I drained them and replaced it with bacta..."

"Scratch."

"...lacerations, contusions..."

" _Scratch_."

"...and Cody I swear on Fett's grave if you didn't kill the sleemo chakaar'e who did this to him I'm gonna blow something stars high and it wont be anything Bacta can fix."

Cody looked back at the medic, noted the way he was gripping his pad so tight his fingertips were white and his generally neatly kept beard was overgrown at the edges.

"They're dead." Cody assured him. "The boys that went in after Rex's rescue team made sure nothing was left standing. Now what is going on here?"

Cody made a sweeping gesture toward the medics still buzzing back and forth across the room, shouting at each other and trying to replace the wires Rex had pulled loose. 

He wasn't thrashing as much, but Cody suddenly identified the odd noise he could hear under the general din of chaos. Muffled through liquid and the glass of the tank, Rex was screaming.

Cody wanted to vomit.

"You know how they found him chained up in some water down there?" Scratch asked finally, sounding worn and worried.

Cody's hand tightened where it was on Scratch's arm.

The medic swallowed.

"I'm not sure he knows he's not there anymore."

Cody's eyes fell closed. Another alarm blared.

"Put him under."

"We can't." Scratch hissed, sounding more upset about that fact than even Cody was. "Weren't you listening? He's got swelling in his brain. I can't put him under until I know for sure the bacta is working and the swelling has gone down. Otherwise he might go under and never come back up."

Cody opened his eyes.

"Okay."

He turned and crossed back over to the tank, bringing him into Rex's line of sight.

What he saw broke his heart.

Rex was no doubt drugged to the gils with everything Scratch felt safe to give him but Cody could still see lines of pain creased around his mouth. His eyes blown wide with confusion and fear.

"Calm down, Vod'ika. You're safe." Cody said, putting his hand on the glass next to Obi Wan's.

Rex brought his hand up too, but his was a fist that tried to bang on the glass. A weak thud vibrated through the glass.

Most of the alarms had stopped, the medics who didn't have a pressing job slumped agains the walls or eachother.

"It's okay Rex. I promise."

Rex's face crumpled, his hand forming a single, signed word.

_Please_.

Obi Wan made a strangled sound and Cody started unbuckling his armor.

"Cody?"

He dropped each plate to the ground carelessly, preferring efficiency over protocol.

"Commander what are you doing?"

"I'm going in."

"Cody you can't."

"I'm going in Scratch!" Cody flung a hand toward the tank, toward Rex. "Can't you see? He's terrified."

Scratch's eyes flashed. "Yes. I can Cody. But that tank wont fit two of you. You're not tubies anymore."

Cody turned back to face Rex. Despite the warm temperature Bacta was kept at Cody could see his whole body was shaking.

"Scratch. I'm not gonna leave him alone again."

The medic sighed.

"I'm going to have to fill your lungs with oxygenated bacta for you to breathe. Its gonna hurt. And you're going to approve my request for additional Bacta on my next requisition form."

Cody pulled off the top of his black's. "Understood."

Scratch...may have understated things. He sat on the edge of the tank in his shorts, head tipped back as bacta poured into his lungs, replacing air and burning like _nine Sith hells_.

He thought he heard Scratch say something about normally being too hurt to notice.

Slowly, his blurry vision cleared and the burning need for air gave way as his lungs adapted to the bacta and he relaxed into the new breathing pattern.

With one last look at Scratch, Cody nodded and lowered himself into the tank.

The tube was small, Rex twitched apparently realizing he wasnt alone, and started thrashing again.

Cody slid in the rest of the way behind him and pressed his body from toe to head behind Rex, trying to keep him still.

With one hand he began replacing a few of the tubes Scratch had indicated, with the other, he kept up a steady stream of rhythmic tapping on Rex's good shoulder.

_You're okay._

_We got you out._

Rex stopped moving.

_I'm here._

_You're safe._

The tension seeped out of Rex's limbs and he relaxed back into Cody, and in return Cody carefully wrapped his limbs around him.

_I'm here now._

_You're not alone._

Under his palm Rex's chest started to heave, the closest to crying he could get in a bacta tank and high on good drugs.

Cody pressed his face into Rex's neck and kept up the tapping.

_I was late._

_I'm sorry._

Rex would survive. Rex would forgive Cody for leaving him behind for the sake of the mission. Rex would forget the pain he'd suffered and the indignity of recovery.

_You're not alone anymore._

But Cody wasn't sure he ever would.

_ I'm sorry. _


	4. Buried alive (unnamed character)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4 - buried alive(not literally. Like, emotionally? I guess?)  
> Tags - depression, implied suicidal ideation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just doing my own thing at this point.

He knows its gotten bad because he is sitting awake in a quiet barracks and he is tired but he can't find the will to try and sleep. 

He doesn't speak, doesn't move. But he stares at the bunk above his, his brother's foot hanging over the edge twitches in sleep, and he waits and waits and waits. 

He knows he is _wrong_. Knows looking forward to the upcoming battle is a sign of something  _ off _ inside him.

Brothers are going to die down there. Maybe even him.

He doesn't care. 

That is a bad sign too.

When the men around him start to grumble and move, feet start to thud on the floor and armor clatters as it is pulled out of the racks, he drags himself up. 

He wishes, again, things were different. That there was a way to get out of his head, out of his skin, that didn't involve putting himself in front of as many Seppie blasters as possible. 

But there isn't. And anyway its worked out so far. 

Later, when he's on the gunship heading for the surface (hasn't eaten, didn't care to) he hopes his brothers haven't noticed the way his responses are wooden and rehearsed. Stale. 

He feels hands on his neck and knocks of bracers against his forearm and shoulder so they probably do. 

He is worried that doesn't seem to mean as much as it used to. 

Once they reach the ground the forward companies have already engaged the enemy. His helmet filters the salty, burnt air and he leaps down ahead of the rest of his squad. Boots in the dirt, he rushes headlong into the battle. 

The only place his mind feels clear. 

And for a little while he doesn't have to think. Doesn't have to be. Just has to aim true and stay low. 

For a little while the chaos of battle fills the emptiness in his chest. 

And when a bolt clips his thigh he doesn't smile, not quite. But it burns and bleeds and hurts and he is thankful. 

At least its something.


End file.
